In the waning days of the presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump zero in on the battleground state of Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, concerns over attempts at outside interference in Tuesday’s election sprang up in the state of Georgia. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his state has been targeted with a video that’s “obviously fake” and likely the product of Russian trolls.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said it is investigating the video.
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Several Arab American leaders in Dearborn say they declined invitations to meet with Donald Trump, who is visiting the nation’s largest majority-Arab city in metro Detroit today.
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud declined an invitation to meet with Trump this week, confirmed Katie Doyal, a spokesperson for Hammoud, to The Associated Press. Hammoud, a Democrat, has not endorsed any presidential candidate this year.
Arab American News publisher Osama Siblani said he was invited to a “handshake” meeting with Trump but responded with conditions, requesting a substantive discussion on community issues.
Siblani also informed Trump allies that the Arab American PAC, which he co-founded, and The Arab American News would not alter their nonendorsements in the presidential race, even if he met with Trump. Siblani said the meeting never materialized after the requests.
The number of people who’ve cast early in-person ballots in North Carolina has exceeded the total from four years ago. Such voting ends Saturday.
State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said that 3.71 million people had cast early in-person ballots as of early Friday.
The previous record was 3.63 million people voting in fall 2020. Early in-person voting has become increasing popular in the presidential battleground state over several election cycles.
State and national Republicans this year have encouraged supporters to vote early. Brinson Bell said voter turnout in counties affected by Hurricane Helene continues to outpace turnout statewide.
Harris says that recent comments by Trump about Liz Cheney show that he is not qualified to be president.
Late Thursday, Trump suggested that Cheney, one of his most prominent Republican critics, should have rifles “shooting at her” to see how she feels about sending troops to fight.
Harris bristled at the remarks.
“Anyone who wants to be president of the United States who uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified and unqualified to be president,” Harris said. “Rep. Cheney is a true patriot who has shown extraordinary courage in putting country above party.”
Harris spoke after landing in Madison, Wisconsin, for a series of events.
Cheney, a former Wyoming congresswoman, voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. She has endorsed Harris.
Trump has landed in Detroit, Michigan, where he is expected for a rally in the suburb of Warren. In the area, he will also visit a restaurant in Dearborn, the nation’s largest Arab-majority city.
Nearly half of the 110,000 residents of Dearborn are Arab American, and the city has become the centerpoint of Democratic dissent over the Israel-Hamas war.
To agree to the visit, the restaurant’s owner told The Associated Press he asked Trump to issue a statement about ending the war and calling for peace in Lebanon, which Israel invaded a few weeks ago. Trump released a statement on Wednesday.
“Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity, and harmony with their neighbors, and that can only happen with peace and stability in the Middle East,” Trump wrote on X.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz says Donald Trump knows nothing about how middle class Americans really live.
“To those undecided folks, the only thing Donald Trump knows about working-class and middle-class people is how to take advantage of them,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee said at a rally in Detroit on Friday. “He talks about manufacturing. The only thing he knows how to manufacture is b———-.”
Walz is scheduled to visit a United Auto Workers union hall outside Detroit after the event.
US intelligence officials say that “Russian influence actors” are responsible for a video circulating online that falsely claimed election fraud was taking place in the state of Georgia.
The video, which began circulating on the social media platform X on Thursday afternoon, claims to show a Haitian immigrant with multiple Georgia IDs who says he is planning to vote multiple times in two counties.
A joint statement issued Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that “Russian influence actors manufactured a recent video that falsely depicted individuals claiming to be from Haiti and voting illegally” in Georgia.
The activity is “part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans,” the statement said.
Earlier Friday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his state has been targeted with a video that’s “obviously fake” and likely the product of Russian trolls “attempting to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the election.”
The original video was no longer on X on Friday morning, but copycat versions were still being shared widely.
The Justice Department is deploying election monitors in 27 states on Election Day to ensure compliance with federal voting rights laws.
The department made the announcement Friday.
The federal monitors will be in 86 jurisdictions across the country. The Justice Department regularly sends monitors across the country on Election Day, to make sure federal laws are being followed at polling places.
The jurisdictions being monitored on Tuesday include Maricopa County, Arizona and Fulton County, Georgia, which in 2020 became the center of election conspiracy theories spread by former President Donald Trump and other Republicans.
Other jurisdictions the Justice Department is sending monitors to include Miami-Dade County, Florida; Detroit, Michigan; Queens, New York; Providence, Rhode Island; Jackson County, South Dakota; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said Friday that state workers have updated election system passwords that were accidentally leaked on a public-facing state website.
The passwords were left on a hidden tab of a spreadsheet online for months, though they were only one of two passwords needed to access voting systems.
The state has layers of security for its voting system, including secured rooms and round-the-clock surveillance.
Colorado’s secretary of state’s office said in a statement Friday that the leak “never posed an immediate security threat” and that the passwords were changed out of an “abundance of caution.”
The mishap came amid skepticism of voting systems, even though U.S. elections nationwide are remarkably fair and reliable. Former President Donald Trump’s campaign sent a letter to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold expressing concerns. In a reply, Griswold reiterated that “no single error can compromise the integrity of the system.”
Election officials in Georgia’s third-largest county say they’re late in mailing more than 3,000 absentee ballots to voters just a few days before the election.
Election officials in Cobb County north of Atlanta say they’re using express mail and UPS overnight shipping in an effort to deliver the ballots on time for them to be returned by Tuesday’s deadline.
A statement from the county Board of Elections blamed the delay on faulty equipment and a late surge in absentee ballot requests. Officials say voters receiving their mailed ballots late can hand-deliver them to the elections office or vote in person.
Meanwhile, civil rights groups filed a lawsuit Friday asking a judge to give Cobb County three extra days to receive and count absentee ballots.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown has ordered two partner organizations to stop sending letters to Maryland voters that threaten to publicly expose registered voters who do not vote in this year’s election.
Brown issued a cease and desist letter to the Center for Voter Information/Voter Participation Center, which is based in Washington, D.C.
The letter also orders them to refrain from sending threatening communications in the future, and to not follow through on threats to embarrass nonvoters by publishing the information to their neighbors.
The attorney general’s office and the state elections board have received several complaints about letters sent by the organizations, claiming to be “Voting Report Cards.”
Maryland law permits a requestor to receive a copy of the voter registration list with voters’ election participation history included. However, Maryland law prohibits conduct designed to “influence or attempt to influence a voter’s decision” or to do so “through the use of force, fraud, threat, menace, intimidation, bribery, reward, or offer of reward.”
Elon Musk, the tech and business titan who is also the world’s richest man, has spent at least $119 million mobilizing Trump’s supporters to back the Republican nominee.
Musk’s conversion to a self-described “Dark MAGA” Trump warrior is a recent one.
In the past, he donated modest sums to both Republicans and Democrats, including $5,000 to Hillary Clinton in 2016, records show. He didn’t contribute to Trump’s political efforts until this year, according to federal campaign finance disclosures.
Musk is now leading America PAC, a super political action committee that is spearheading Trump’s get-out-the-vote effort.
Trump has made his opposition to transgender rights a central theme in the closing days of the campaign.
The Republican nominee’s campaign and aligned political action committees have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising that attacks Harris for previous statements supporting transgender rights.
Trump has vowed to target transgender people if elected. He has said he would ask Congress to pass a bill stating there are “only two genders” and to ban hormonal or surgical intervention for transgender minors in all 50 states.
Harris has been underscoring that she has supported federal policies that were in place when Trump was president. LGBTQ advocates argue that Trump’s rhetoric encourages hostility toward transgender people and fosters misunderstandings about who they are.
The final day for voters to apply for an early mail-in ballot in a populous suburban Philadelphia county is underway.
Voters in Bucks County, a bellwether whose residents Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris have courted in the presidential campaign’s final days, have until 5 p.m. Friday to apply for, receive and cast on the spot a mail-in ballot.
The court-ordered deadline is a three-day extension, stemming from a lawsuit brought by Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee and GOP Senate candidate David McCormick’s campaign this week.
They alleged that voters faced disenfranchisement when they were turned away when county government offices that process the applications closed.
Harris and Trump will host dueling rallies on Friday in the Milwaukee area as part of a final push for votes in swing-state Wisconsin.
Milwaukee is home to the most Democratic votes in Wisconsin, but its conservative suburbs are where most Republicans live and are a critical area for Trump as he tries to reclaim the state he narrowly won in 2016 and lost in 2020.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his state has been targeted with a video that’s “obviously fake” and likely the product of Russian trolls “attempting to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the election.”
The video, which began circulating on the social media platform X on Thursday afternoon, claims to show a Haitian immigrant with multiple Georgia IDs who says he is planning to vote multiple times in two counties.
“This is false and is an example of targeted disinformation we’ve seen this election,” Raffensperger said.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said it is investigating the video.
An Associated Press analysis of the information on two of the IDs confirms it does not match any registered voters in the counties.
The original video was no longer on X on Friday morning, but copycat versions were still being shared widely.
Former President Donald Trump launched another attack on former Rep. Liz Cheney late Thursday, calling the Republican former Wyoming congresswoman a “war hawk.”
During an event in Glendale, Arizona, with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the Republican presidential candidate was asked if it is weird to see Cheney campaign against him.
Cheney held the No. 3 GOP leadership position in the House, but lost the job after she voted to to impeach Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. She has since campaigned for Harris.
Trump called Cheney “a deranged person,” then added: “But the reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. If it were up to her we’d be in 50 different countries.”
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